Hi recently I have purchased a new build house on 1/2 acre of land, before I purchased the house I knew the grass was damp/wet and I thought it would need drained but I'm not a hundred percent sure hence why I am asking advice here, when I dig into the garden there is not obvious water lying but when it rains heavily there is water on top of the soil and this will take approx 4-5 dry days to fully dry out which makes cutting the grass a challenge as the last time I only could wait 2-3 days and my mower ended up getting stuck in the mud, I have found out some background on the ground on which the house sits and this is it. The land has been used for sheep grazing previously, and as far as I am aware there was also a small house on the land. My next store neighbour has had to drain his garden also and I have found out that there is an underground stream which runs across the road at the bottom of my garden. I had also been talking to the farmer who uses the land behind my house for sheep farming and had mentioned about having to drain the garden and he said he was very surprised as he had watched the builder and that the builder had put quite a few lorry fills of gravel into the site to help with the drainage and that there is a drain running around the edge of my garden. I thought nothing of this until at the weekend I was planting a blackberry bush and dug down about 6-8" and found that below this the garden is gravel, I used a fork to test other parts of the garden and it seems that I only have about 6-8" of soil and then gravel below this, I would have thought that the gravel would have allowed for good drainage of the garden? Anyone have any suggestions as to where to go from here?
Thanks in advance for any help you can offer.
Cheers Keith